World Youth Day 2000
World Youth Day 2000 pass
Note: I wrote a journal while working as a chaperone for World Youth Day 2000 in Italy. My youngest brother, Joe, was a member of a group of Maine high school students making the journey.
World Youth Day featured a lot of visits to Roman basilicas for the Holy Year of 2000. Without getting into too much explanation, we were pilgrims in bright orange t-shirts.
We wore them for big events, such as when we visited St. Peter's Basilica and when we to University Tor Vergata for a giant outdoor mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II. The fluorescent clothing helped us from getting lost amid the thousands of fellow Catholics from around the world.
I'm going to post excerpts from what I wrote, trying to keep in the parts that might embarrass me now, leave out the dull and not get into naming people who had unpleasant experiences.
No teen was seriously hurt during the trip, though the heat caused problems.
I'll try to explain events before each day's posts. For example, I and other pilgrims left the Maine Mall parking lot in South Portland, Maine, by bus and flew out of Logan Airport in Boston. We landed in Belgium before flying into Rome.
At the time of this writing, I was 30 years old and a reporter for the Kennebec Journal, a daily newspaper in Augusta, Maine. Joe was 18 and was about to begin his senior year at Portland High School in Portland, Maine.
When I saw a misspelling in the journal, I made a correction when typing it out. But if I saw a grammatical error that didn't make a sentence incomprehensible, such as putting in a parenthetical remark after a period, as seen in the second paragraph below, I kept it.
If a sentence needed an explanation, I put it in brackets.
Sunday, August 13
It was overcast in the Maine Mall parking lot. I bought a copy of "Brill's Content" at Borders.
We left on our bus at 2 p.m. We arrived at Logan Airport at 4:45 p.m. (traffic on the turnpike was slow)
When I saw the crowd at Logan, I asked, "Is everyone fleeing America or is it always this busy?"
It's an airport, Joe said. I had never been on a commercial airliner before.
While we waited for our flight in the lounge, I passed a tired-looking former Senator George Mitchell. He was wearing a blazer and an open-necked dress shirt.
Aboard our Sabena plane, I noticed a tomato sauce stain on the edge of the serving tray in front of me. A projection screen showed our path across the Atlantic. We had 3,474 miles to Brussels.
As the plane started to move, one female student from Rumford said, "Ooh, we're stahting, we're kind of moving [Maine accent for "starting," also not mentioning this was before takeoff in Boston].
The windows were tough to look out of at first because of all the condensation on it. I had a window seat.
The seats on our plane were navy blue with golden fish, roosters, planes, hearts, fish and suns on them. Our little white pillows had suns on them.
I could not sleep much on the flight. Although I had my Italian books and my tour books, I was too excited to do anything.
Our stewardess speaking French was another reminder of a trip to another country. The flight took six hours and 10 minutes.
Monday, August 14
Brussels, 9:22 European time [a.m.]
I knew I was in a foreign country when the urinals had ashtrays next to them. The towel dispensers were different too —they had towels, but long continuous non-tearable fabric ones.
I had to watch someone else use them because I tried to tear a sheet with no success. After wiping one's hands, you pull them further for someone else, and the used towels gather in a tray underneath the machine.
Right now my ears still feel plugged after coming off the plane, so it's like I came back from swimming. It's fitting since I just got off my first commercial airplane ride, quite a change from David Phair's puddle jumper two years ago in Peru at Worthley Pond [I rode in a floatplane during an end of year faculty party when I taught high school at Dirigo High School in Dixfield, Maine in 1998].
One of the student students sitting next to me in the lounge complained about the smoke in the terminals, but it's Europe.
A guy next to me pulled out a 150 ml can of Sprite, another change.
The flight was fun, even though I could not sleep. I did not realize how quickly jets accelerate into the air. I did like seeing the 45-degree angle everyone was at.
I enjoyed flying out of Boston, as well as seeing the full moon above the cloud cover. As we headed across the Atlantic, the moon made a small arc in my window. I did like seeing all the fluffy clouds —because they were beneath me, a first. It was strange to see all the patterns of clouds at 30,000, some in parallel lines, some cumulus clouds.
I had initially thought I spotted a thunderstorm after takeoff only to realize it was just the blinking light on the plane's wing.
Brian was one of the chaperones for the trip. He went with his younger brother John just as I did with Joe.
With the exception of Joe, all the teen boys in our group attended Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine. It is a Catholic school. Mike was one of the Cheverus students.
Tuesday, August 15
6:40 a.m.
I am riding on a bus to Naples and Pompeii.
Yesterday we flew over the Alps in our plane, which was beautiful. It was amazing to look down on snow-capped mountains surrounding Switzerland. Then I fell asleep.
I awoke while we were beginning our descent to our airport. I noticed all the brown fields were punctuated with some green (I later learned Italy had faced a very dry summer). I wondered how much irrigation Italians used. I spotted lots of tile roofs, and thought how it's for real, not a reproduction.
I swam in the Mediterranean. Joe, Brian, John, a couple Cheverus guys and two girls from Cape Elizabeth and I walked to the sea. Brian later said the shore reminded him of New Jersey.
We found what we thought was a public beach. The boys went right in and Brian said he did not know any of these people except us, and headed in
Aside from the Speedos and the very dark tans a lot of people had, it was not too different from the ones I had been to in Maine. People stubbed out cigarettes in the sand, which people do in lesser numbers now in Maine.
And despite what I had often heard about Europe, no topless women. I noticed a couple little girls wearing swim trunks and no tops (Mike later said he spotted topless women at another beach).
The water was azure blue and warm. Cool enough to make me feel like I was in the ocean, but not the bone-chilling cold I was used to. The beach had small rocks on it, and when I swam I heard the rocks rattle as the waves rolled them back. The beach had a steep drop off, and although it did not have crashing waves, I kept bobbing up and down as the waves came in. It was fun and tiring as I swam around.
11:21 a.m., outside Naples
Naples, which we left, is an amazingly hilly city next to the ocean. It has countless apartment buildings whose terraces are filled with various potted plants.
The closer you get to the ocean, though, the nicer the buildings are. I noticed balusters on balconies with door-length shutters. A lot of the colors of buildings were different too —mustard color or dark red. A lot of the buildings look like they were built in the same 20-year period, probably after World War II.
We are now on the road to Pompeii and I can see Mt. Vesuvius looming in the distance. I just took a picture of a church or monastery in the distance. When you pray there, I bet you're reminded of mortality.
Oops — I wasn't looking at Vesuvius. It's further south.
World Youth Day pilgrims in Pompeii
10:54 p.m.
Pompeii astonished me because of all the stores, shops and vendors around it.
But now for what I really wanted to know about — the lost city. Most of the frescoes and other artworks are in museums. The ones that remain are sometimes covered with clear plastic sheets. The ash that buried the city did not preserve buildings intact and instead brick walls sometimes held things together.
So although I thought Pompeii would offer more to see that resembled pictures in my Latin books, I did find myself impressed by its breadth of architecture and the glimpse of city life. I loved the forum area with its temple to Jupiter, as well as the amphitheater at our tour's end. The amphitheater is intact and I would have wanted to stay longer had it not been so hot.
Here's a moment I want to remember, seeing crowds of fellow tourists walking down the cobblestone [probably not] streets and sometimes walking on the stepping stones used as crosswalks.
I saw a Japanese guy walking around in a suit. Another tourist wore a t-shirt for Machu Pichu in Peru, another lost city found. Some guides, like the one I was with, used a radio antenna with a Tinky Winky doll from "The Teletubbies" as a way to help people follow her.
After leaving the baths, some tourists stopped at a snack bar in the midst of Pompeii with Coca-Cola and other treats.
The heat snuck up on me because it wasn't humid. After a while, I simply wanted to get out of the sun. I liked our look at a wealthy family's house, but because I knew about Roman history, I did not want to hear too much about how people reclined on couches while they ate. I wanted to ask questions. but since our tour lasted over an hour, I did not want to slow people down.
Another sight I liked — the remains of a baker's shop with brick ovens intact. Our guide said carbonized loaves were found when Pompeii was unearthed. I also liked the grooves left in stone at intersections and other places from carts and chariots. I overheard one guide say this while my guide insisted the grooves themselves were put intentionally into the rocks to prevent slipping.
I liked seeing "original" Corinthian columns too when I started my tour. It's so amazing to see remains of post and lintel buildings and pillars. The real thing —and I saw it. At last.
Final note of the night — while sitting in a restaurant outside Pompeii with two students and a parent, one of them noticed a lemon tree in a yard next to the restaurant. She took a picture. I noticed a lime tree in the same garden.
I joked how we have Sprite, which is lemon and lime flavored soda, and they laughed.
O.K. —another —sodas are sweeter here. And the Mediterranean is saltier than the Atlantic, according to Mike.
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